A short YouTube talk by Adrian Reid presenting a trading-psychology technique: stop obsessing over money and instead identify the underlying feelings you want from trading (e.g., security, freedom, happiness). Once the desired feeling is clear, focus on the small set of consistent day-to-day trading actions (follow your plan, execute systems, control risk/size) that produce those feelings rather than on account balance fluctuations.
Chapters
In this week's short video, I just want to share with you one simple trading psychology concept that really helped me transform my psychology and finally eliminate my day to day stress out of trading. So it becomes really easy and simple and I don't have any of those emotional swings anymore. And that's what I want for your trading, so that you can trade stress free and really enjoy the process and get the most out of it. This concept came up again for me this week because one of my coaching students asked me a question and what he asked me was really interesting was he was reading Market Wizards and said, I know that I'm not supposed to focus on the money, and focusing on the money is bad and dangerous and difficult and all of those things. But if I'm not supposed to focus on the money, what am I supposed to focus on? And how do I get my mind off the need to make money and grow my account constantly over time? How do I get rid of my addiction to thinking about and watching my account balance? And the answer came for me when I was thinking about what do I really want out of trading? And if you ask yourself right now, ask yourself now, what do you want out of trading? Why do you trade? I mean, most people will immediately answer, well, I want to trade to make money, but why do you want to make money? If I think, why do I want to make money trading? Well, I want to make money trading so I have.
The freedom to buy the things I need for my family and myself to travel and have experiences and so I can feel happy and confident. If you look, there are three different types of reasons in there. The first one is stuff, for example, I want to trade so I can make money so I can buy a new car. Second one was experiences. I want to trade so I can make money so I can go on a holiday with my family. And the third one was feelings. I want to trade so I can feel safe and secure in my financial future. Now, three different types of reasons. But if you look at the first two, stuff and experiences, why do you want those things? Why do you want a new car? Why do you want to go on a holiday with your family? Usually, things and stuff and experiences are things we desire them so that we can feel a certain way. So it all comes down at the end of the day to a feeling. The third reason, a feeling that we're going to get as a result of trading and making money. So if you want to trade to make money so you can buy a new car, for instance, think about why you Want to do that? I want to trade so I can make money, so I can buy a new car, so that I can. You fill in the blank. Fill in the blank for yourself right now. Chances are what you filled it in with was some sort of feeling. So I can feel good, so I can feel happy, so I can feel free, so I can feel a sense of joy in my life. Any of those sorts of things. They're all feelings. So why do we trade? Ultimately, yeah, we want to make money, but ultimately we want to do it for some sort of feeling. And if you can identify that feeling for you, then this point in the middle, this idea of making money, becomes much less important because you know, it's only a stepping stone to this ultimate thing of getting a certain feeling in life. Now what do we do with that to make our trading better day to day? That's actually really simple. If what we want is the feeling, then what we got to do is think about what are the actions that we take in our trading day to day that will ultimately give us that feeling. Because we know money will come eventually if we do the right things. But if we're not aiming for the money, we're aiming for the feeling, we then are easily able to focus on the small number of actions that we can do consistently to get that feeling and not worry so much about the money and what happens in between. Because that's only an intermediate goal. The ultimate goal is the feeling we're going to generate. What I'd encourage you to do if you're struggling with the focus and the money and the worry about your account balance going up and down, is think about why, why do you want the money? What do you want to feel as a result of all of that? Then come all the way back to the beginning and think, what are the actions I need to take in my trading day to day to ensure that I'm going to get that feeling? Chances are it's going to be a couple of really simple things. Follow your trading plan, execute every trade your system generates, control your risk and size every trade conservatively, and so on. There's going to be a small number of really simple action that every trader has to do in order to trade well so they can get the results and the feelings that they really want in life. So that's it for today's video. Focus on the feelings you're going to generate out of trading and use that to understand what actions you need to take day to day consistently, rather than focusing about the money, because that's only the intermediate goal. So if you like this video, what I'd like you to do is just click the like button below and also just leave me a comment. Are you clear on the day to day actions you need to take in order to get the feelings and results that you want out of your trading? Just comment. Simple yes or no. And if you'd like to have a quick discussion about some interaction about what those feelings are, pop some ideas in the chat box and let's talk about them and we'll have a conversation. See where we can take it. See if we can clarify things for you. So that's all for this week. I'll see you in the next video.
